Last week's Stump Talk column, linking the recent, drastic downsizing of Greenpeace to its lack of commitment to local activism, went to press (ironically) just as Greenpeace sprang its most dramatic and successful action around here in many years. The 48-hour suspension of seven activists from the Aurora Bridge, blocking outgoing ocean-going trawler traffic, was truly a heroic act. Yet it also demonstrated--again-- how Greenpeace has isolated itself, and why, on a whole host of environmental, social, and economic justice issues, passionate and well- informed activists are spinning their wheels.

Five of Greenpeace's danglers, and all of the media spokespeople, were from out of state. None spoke from first-hand knowledge of the urgent crisis in overfishing and environmental degradation taking place in the Bering Sea and the North Pacific--or made common cause with the people who've witnessed it.

While the atrocities are taking place hundreds and thousands of miles away, this is a local issue. Seattle is base for the two U.S. corporations that dominate the North Pacific fleet: American Seafoods Corp. (a subsidiary of Norwegian conglomerate Resource Group International), and Arctic-Alaska Fisheries Company, purchased in 1992 by chicken mogul and Clinton pal Don Tyson. (As a result, the White House, under Ron Brown, brokered a deal with government insurance and the Overseas Private Investment Corp; Arctic- Alaska now processes most of its catch in Shanghai, China, instead of Seattle. Welcome to the global economy.)

There are literally thousands of people living here who have worked or are working these seasonal trawlers. Any and all can attest to the long hours, hard, messy, dangerous work, the mountains of fish guts, the indiscriminate killing of any creatures caught up in miles-wide swaths of netting, and the increasing use by Tyson and RGI of low-paid Vietnamese and Mexican laborers in sweatshop-like conditions. Like forest loggers, these folks know perfectly well that what they see is not sustainable, that it is gross corporate abuse of the planet. Unlike rural loggers, many are already out of the industry and willing to talk about it.

Instead, local coverage featured the Washington state AFL-CIO, which blasted Greenpeace's action as hostile to workers. Space constraints don't permit our usual bashing of Seattle's organized labor hierarchy, other than to note that they're so glued to the buttocks of local corporate Democrats and the ideology of profit-taking that it's no surprise they would take such a line. Meanwhile, workers are being fished right out of their remaining jobs, and exploitative creeps like Tyson and RGI could not care less.

Had any of our cell-phoned danglers been able to state the obvious (e.g., "I've seen what goes on. They're full of shit."), it would have trumped corporate apologists with a powerful message. But Greenpeace doesn't solicit local activists or recruit allies. (A trawler survivor wanting to help is stuck, like anyone else, calling the Seattle office, leaving a voice mail message with a randomly selected name from the menu, since no human contact is provided, and hoping against hope they'll call back.) Instead, media quotes came from a young, East Coast activist who'd read about the Bering Sea. Many people saw naive kids or an annoying publicity stunt, not a desperate action from the heart. Media coverage of the activists focused on the Greenpeace brand name--not the urgent need to stop corporate rape of the oceans.

Radical political demands can't succeed using liberal tactics. Politically, despite the spectacle, Greenpeace used a liberal appeal: a call to the altruism of people who have no direct stake in the outcome of a political struggle. Such tactics pluck heartstrings and even wallets, but rarely lead to major and lasting policy change.

Moral aspects of political issues should always be pointed out; but, in late 20th Century America, they rarely sway more than about 10 to 15 percent of the public. Sadly, but realistically, nice ideas don't get people moving. Self-interest does.

Thanks to Greenpeace, local viewers saw labor defending the trawler fleets, when in three years few trawler workers will have the same jobs. Similarly, neo-hippies make committed forest activists, but the victories are won when the loggers, small property owners, and towns whose jobs and water supplies are getting fucked up by absentee corporations decide they, too, have had enough. Ditto taxpayers irate about corporate welfare, seniors who can't get health care, moms with no access to day care, communities targetted for police harassment, and so on. White liberalism--"Those People Need Help, Let's Fix It For Them"--won't get it done. If anything, it's made Bill Clinton possible.

Will the effort to halt Bering Sea overfishing benefit from Greenpeace's action? Hopefully so. But the impact could have been far greater if it had invested a fraction of the money and effort in class issues that it did in mountaineering equipment.